When shopping online, participants surveyed spent more money, purchased more items, and spent less on candy and desserts than when they shopped in-store, according to a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier.
In recent years, online grocery shopping has grown exponentially. To describe the grocery shopping patterns of people who shopped both online and in-store and evaluate whether shoppers purchased fewer unhealthy, impulse-sensitive items online, 137 primary household shoppers in Maine who shopped at least once in-store and online (with curbside pickup) were studied for 5,573 total transactions from 2015-2017.
“There were differences in both the quantity and types of food purchased when shopping online compared to in-store. When study participants were shopping online, they spent about 44 percent more per transaction, and they purchased a greater number and variety of items compared to when they shopped in-store,” said lead author Laura Zatz, ScD, MPH, Department of Nutrition and Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA. [Read more…] about Consumers spent less on candy and desserts when shopping online